Archive

Winter is the time of year with shorter days, lower intensity sunlight, and colder weather leading to most people making less vitamin D in their skin due to less sun exposure. The result is that vitamin D levels decline markedly during the winter in people not taking vitamin D supplements. Scientists believe that this accounts in large part for why winter is also the time of year with higher rates of colds and flus. We’ve discussed this further in our article H1N1 / Swine Flu Risk Increased by Low Vitamin D.Read more…

Flu season is here in the northern hemisphere. While there’s still no epidemic of “novel H1N1 flu” or “swine flu” as has been feared since last year, medical centers across the United States are reporting widely varying levels of flu infections. To date, sunny warm areas like Southern California have few infections, cold and cloudy areas like the Upper Midwest have many more. You can find maps showing the US CDC’s attempt at showing levels of infection outbreak across the United States at 2009 H1N1 Flu U.S. Situation Update. Unfortunately, these maps are of poor quality as they really don’t show much of any useful data because the CDC considers most areas to have “widespread” flu outbreaks at this time their maps don’t distinguish sufficiently between the level of flu activity in different areas.Read more…

Last week, I posted an article on N-acetylcysteine (NAC) that mentioned a number of health conditions for which it is believed to be helpful. I also discussed my experience with the supplement and how and why I’ve used it. As is usual with articles, some of the feedback I got was along the lines of “so does it work?” That’s a good question.Read more…